I Am
by PrincessMelissa83
Summary: A series of self portriats from the characters in the show. It's basically just little essays on how the characters view themselves and their relationships with others. [In Progress]
1. Kagome

**I Am

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_"I am one, but I am one; I cannot do everything, but I can do something; and what I should do and can do, by the grace of God, I will do." Unknown

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Life is filled with uncertainties. We can never be sure if each moment might be our last and so we cannot afford to leave anything or anyone waiting in the wings. For peace will never be achieved by one who lives with regrets.

I don't regret anything that I have done. I know that I am not perfect and I have no desire to be. I've made mistakes and I have hurt people. I know that and I can live with it because I also know that I have done everything within my power to atone for those mistakes. The rest is up to them. Maybe I am not the person that people think that I should be, but I'm okay with that too. I can't and won't be anyone but me.

I've been told that I am the reincarnation of a great priestess who, during her _first_ life was beautiful, graceful, gentle, quiet and mature. She was powerful and well equipped with a bow and arrow - a champion archer. I have been told that I should strive to be more like her. I simply smile and nod silently, knowing in my mind that that will never happen because I am me and that is all I will ever be. I'm compassionate, optimistic, short-tempered, I try to be kind to all people. I'm passionate about the things I believe in and I tend to yell a lot. Especially when it comes to dealing with certain members of my circle of friends.

I am a decent shot with a bow and arrow, but I'm no expert. I am not exactly coordinated but I do the very best that I can. I've been called weak, but know that I am not.

I have been told that I should love a certain type of person and while my mind agrees that this person is probably the best thing that might happen to any girl, my heart pulls me to someone else entirely. Mr. Perfect doesn't need me - I am not perfect and I don't want to be. I am drawn to the one who does need me to heal him and I will because I know that I am the only one who can.

I have loved so deeply that I have simply wept at the thought. Because of that love I have forgiven the unforgivable, I have understood that which cannot be understood and I have done the impossible. I have given my heart freely to one who is not free and I have given it knowing that some day in the near future I will have to leave him and follow a path of life much different from his and leading me far from him. But my heart will stay with him no matter where I go because I know that despite everything I would never be able to love another as much as I love him and it would be unfair of me to try.

I am loved by the man who holds my heart. He has never told me that he loves me and he probably never will. I have never told him how deeply I feel for him and chances are I will never be given the chance. 'I love you' is a simple phrase, but I believe we will never speak these words to one another because we don't need too. Our love is pure and simple and complete. To try and express it in words would only taint it and make it a complicated mess.

And one day I will leave him because as much as I love him I know that to stay with him would ruin what we share and I could never allow something this beautiful to fester into something hideous and ugly. And when I do leave him I will wish that he would forget me because to remember would only cause him pain and I never want him to hurt again. Not after I've worked so hard to heal him.

I am a miko, but I don't practice. I am the purifier, the holy one, the guardian of an ancient stone, the next in line for a position that has been passed down in my family line for hundreds of years. I am the only one who can contain a power stronger than your wildest dreams - or my worst nightmares. That which I guard has brought pain, suffering and death to innumerable people, but it has given me everything I ever needed and never knew I was missing. It has brought to me more than I could have ever wished for.

I am Higarashi Kagome: granddaughter of Higarashi Hitomi; daughter of Higarashi Haruki and Takaeuchi Keiko; sister of Higarashi Souta.

I am Higarashi Kagome: sister to a girl who lost everyone to the brother she loved; sister to a lecherous monk who keeps a good spirit despite knowing he will loose his life to a curse he did not deserve; granddaughter to a priestess who had no reason to take me in or share her home with me, but who did so anyway; mother to a child I did not bare but feel as if I did; lover to a man who pines for another; enemy of he who threatens to take away everything I have worked to achieve.

I am Higarashi Kagome. I am a teacher and a student; I am a healer and a destroyer; I am a friend and a foe; I am a guardian and a ward.

I am Higarashi Kagome. I am the reincarnation of a priestess who despises me. I am the creator of a legend so fantamic most believe it never happened, but hope that it did. I am the guardian of a jewel so powerful that it scares me.

I am Higarashi Kagome. I am everything that I can and ever will be.

I am Higarashi Kagome.

**Ka-go-me.**


	2. Kikyo

**I Am

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_"Life is the desert. Life is the solitude. Death joins us in the great majority." Edward Young

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Beautiful. Powerful. Wise. Reserved. Hateful. Spiteful. Bitch. Heartless. Cold.

I have been called all of these things by man people. By people that I know and people that I do not; by people that I hate and people that I love...or did at one time. When you are forced to walk the world as a shell of your former self while someone else has embodied your soul and the only thing keeping you alive - if you can call this existence a life - is your hatred for those who caused your death, love is a difficult emotion to possess.

It is not that I have never loved or that I am not capable of such an emotion. I have in my past, loved and loved deeply. I loved my haha-ue and my chichi-ue. I loved my little sister - I still love her, in my way, the only way I can while I cling to this false existence. At one time I think I might even have loved Inuyasha. I think. Love, in a romantic sense, is a difficult ting for me to define. My love for my family was - is - an understood feeling, bred into my heart from the day of my birth. But I had never witnessed romantic love, up close, and I became old enough to entertain such a notion there was no one for me to ask. I held a fondness for Inuyasha. I did not want to hurt him and I enjoyed being with him. Had our circumstances been different I could have lived my life out with him and been happy. Did I love him? I believe I did.

I have not experienced true happiness since I was a child. My chichi-ue died when I was eight, not long after my sister was born. I believe my last brush with complete joy _was_ the day Kaede was born. That same year I also experienced pure hatred. Hate for the bandits that killed chichi-ue.

I think that the hatred had never really disappeared, although for the sake of my sister and haha-ue I managed to suppress it somewhere so deep within myself that I fronted a convincing face of pure innocence. Even when my haha-ue died five years later. Not even when that same year did I become responsible for my little sister, but I was elected the guardian of the Shikon no Tama, a coveted jewel with the power to destroy and the power to heal.

No one asked if this was a responsibility that I wanted to take on. The taijiya simply arrived at our hut one day, explained their purpose and left the jewel in my hands. But this was my fate and I accepted it and I performed to the best of my ability. I have never been one to run from my duty.

I realize now that I have always harbored animosity towards the jewel. Since my death I have also begun to realize that many of the choices that I made during my life were not the right ones and held dire consequences. Where I prepared to let go of this life and return to my eternal rest, I would allow myself to admit the truth: that no one is to blame for my death but myself.

But I am not ready. Not yet.

Beautiful. Powerful. Wise. Reserved. Hateful. Spiteful. Bitch. Heartless. Cold. Yes, those words do describe me. I am and have been all of those things. The truth cannot be evaded for long.

But I am more than that. Much more.

I am the priestess, Kikyo. I am daughter; mother to my orphaned sister; powerful miko; guardian of the Shikon no Tama; lover; protector and destroyer; healer and killer.

I am the priestess, Kikyo. I died believing the man I loved betrayed me. I died with my heart blackened with hate. I have lived in Hell for fifty years. I have been reincarnated. I have been resurrected. I am a soulless shell of my former self.

I am the priestess, Kikyo. I have been there. I have done that. I own the tee-shirt. (A/N: I couldn't resist)

I am...

**Kikyo**


	3. Inuyasha

**I AM

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_"It's better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you're not." Unknown

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There are some common sayings among people like "you only live once" or "death is final" or "you never get a second chance" and other such nonsense as that. Well, so maybe it's not nonsense to most people and especially to those that say them, but to me and a select other few beings, they've got it all wrong. I actually prefer something I heard in a 'mo-ve' one time..."Death is only the beginning." Now _that's_ more like it.

I have died and I have wished I were dead and someday, hopefully many from years from now, I will die again. Under better circumstances, of course. Say, maybe peacefully, painlessly, in my sleep. Not that I sleep much. One becomes much too vulnerable when he sleeps to long or to heavily and vulnerability is not something that I can afford if I wish to die that peaceful and painless death far in the future.

I am a mixture of two races, the perfect balance between power and emotion...or in theory anyway. My father was a inu taiyoukai, great lord of the Western Lands. My mother was a hime, human. I suppose that makes me nobility in some off handed way, not that it really matters. I will never lay claim to any part of my father's lands nor my mother's as her family would sooner see me dead than have me burden them with my _despicable_ presence.

I am a hanyou, desired by both races. I do not carry enough youkai blood within me to find a place amongst the youkai and the humans are terrified of me because of the youkai blood. I have been beaten, spit on and starved. I have been cursed and ostracized by everyone I have ever met. I lived my life alone, deprived of affection and acceptance, striving to belong to someone or to some place. That is...until I met her.

Don't take that the wrong way. It wasn't her specifically I was after in the beginning. I wanted something far more precious. I wanted that which she guarded, the one thing in this world that could give me what I long for - the acceptance I coveted. But to get to that which would grant me my truest desires, I had to get through the priestess that guarded it.

Simple, ne?

Not in the least.

I have committed a lot of sins and I have made more mistakes than I could ever count and I have done things that I will regret for the rest of my life. None of them, however, will ever top what I did to gain the acceptance I lusted for. Innocent people were hurt and killed for my desires. The woman I loved died because of them. I will never forget that.

I deserved to die.

It was only fitting that she was the one to end it. She who would have been my mate, took my life on what would have been, in a way, my wedding day. My dreams crumbled at my feet in the same moment her arrow pinned me to the sacred tree. With my last breath, I cursed her name.

My death lasted fifty years.

That my first love's reincarnation would be the one to resurrect me from the grave would be called irony, I believe. Perhaps it should be called fate at work.

Since my resurrection I have learned things that I couldn't have fathomed in my first life. I have done things that I would never have considered doing. I have become more than I ever expected to be. And I owe it all to one person, to the person who granted me this second chance and who has promised to stay by my side for as long as I'll let her.

She doesn't know what she's gotten herself into.

I have learned to deal with emotions that terrified me before: sorrow, compassion, happiness, love. Because of her I have found what I wanted so badly without the help of some jewel. I have been given a second chance to live...and love.

Love is something I don't have much experience or knowledge about. I loved my mother. I thought I loved Kikyo. I _know_ I love Kagome. I love her scent, her smile, her voice. Her presence is comforting and relaxing. She has given me acceptance, friendship and purpose. She has shed tears for me. She has risked her own life to protect mine when everyone thought my life was worthless. Everything that I have and everything that I have become is because of her. I owe Kagome my life.

But I owe Kikyo my death.

Kikyo killed me that day because she believed I had betrayed her. She died that day because she loved me. She died to follow me. And, because of me, she now walks the earth once more unable to rest peacefully because she is filled with hatred for me.

I hate being confused. In my first life, I knew what I wanted and I knew what I had to do to acquire it. And that was the gist of how my mind worked. I have, however, lived my second life in a constant state of utter confusion. Kagome boggles my mind. She is beyond my understanding and I have long since given up trying. When I first revived, I thought of her as Kikyo, but not even Kikyo could manage to baffle me the way that Kagome does and I have learned in the months following those days that Kagome is Kagome and no one else. I wouldn't want her to be. I would only confuse me more. Even more confusing are the decisions that I will have to make when our quest is finished and I no longer have a reason to put them off.

I am the legendary Inuyasha. I am the youngest son of the great Inu Taiyoukai of the Western Lands. I am the only son of a beautiful hime. I am the younger brother of Sesshomaru, taiyoukai of our father's holdings.

I am the legendary Inuyasha. I am a grandson to a priestess who takes care of me, but has every reason to despise me. I am a son to a woman who has no reason to trust me, but who puts the life of her daughter into my hands every day. I am a brother to an annoying and lecherous monk. I am a brother to a woman who has been trained all of her life to kill creatures like me, but who sees me as a person instead of a creature, for which I am grateful. I am a father to an orphaned kitsune. I am loved by a woman I will eventually have to let go.

I am the legendary Inuyasha. I am a plague to humanity. I am a sin against nature. I am a creature to be beaten. I am hated for my heritage, punished for my parents actions. I am a protector and a destroyer. I am a friend and a foe. I am evil and I am good. I am hated and I am loved.

I am the legendary Inuyasha. I wield the Tetsuseiga to protect those that would do me harm. I am a leader of a pack. I am a pursuer of the Shikon no Tama.

I am the legendary Inuyasha. And for the first time in either of my lives, I am happy.

I am Inuyasha.

**Inuyasha**

**The Dog Daemon**


	4. Sango

**I AM

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_"Dreams fade and people die, but memories last forever...the only way to never lose the ones you love is to never stop loving them." Unknown

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Pain. Sorrow. Grief. Regret. These simple emotions cannot even begin to describe the turmoil I feel within my soul. They fill my very being, leaving little room for anything else. But I won't let them consume me. I am stronger than that. people depend on me and I won't let them down. I will not give up and I will not give in. Not when the lives of everyone I care about hang in the balance. Not when I risk the only thing I have left.

I have been taught all of my life how to keep control; how to train my body and mind to endure intense stress and punishment; how to work past my weaknesses - and they are many. I suppose that is how I still am able to stand and move on despite the images that torment my sleep.

I have watched while the brother I loved, the boy I raised, took away everything I held dear in one fell swoop. I watched him end the lives of our friends and family. I watched as he slew our father, our teacher, our friend. I saw the fear, the revulsion, the pain when his eyes unclouded and saw what his hand had done. And I wept. I did not cry for the fallen men around us, though my heart did break for their loss, and I did not cry for the pain of my own wounds. I wept for my baby brother, my child, and the knowledge that he would die with their blood on his hands and he didn't even know why.

I have greeted death with open arms and I have been turned away.

I have lived ever day knowing that one day my brother's life will end, possibly by my own hand. Not to punish him for what he has done, but to free him from the suffering caused by those actions. And, when he is finally at rest, I will follow him because I know he fears being alone in the dark and I never want him to feel afraid again.

I have decided that until that day I will fill the void in my heart with good things in an effort to survive until then. I have friends who may not understand me, but accept me, love me, nonetheless. I have threatened them. I have tried to kill them. I have betrayed them. They will not let me leave. I asked why, one day, after my betrayal that almost cost them their lives. They will not blame me. Maybe they do understand.

Maybe.

I have wasted many hours trying to teach a lecherous monk the correct way to court a woman. I have been unsuccessful. I have also agreed to be his wife because I have begun to understand him. His hands will wander, but his heart never will. I have never told him that, despite my better judgment, I have come to love him as I have never loved another man. He has never said that he loves me, even when he asked me to live with him and bear his children. To speak such confessions at this time would bring about only heartache for I cannot rest until I know that my brother will live and that my family has been avenged. Yet my heart yearns to tell him and I wake each day with those sweet words on my lips, knowing that if I do not say them, he may never know for we cannot be sure how many more sunsets we will have together. And yet they remain unsaid.

I have also learned great patience.

I have lost much, but I have gained in its place. I lost one family only to be adopted into one that is smaller and much more dysfunctional that the first, but just as important. I lost one home, but I have gained another. My home is where my friends are. It always will be.

I am Sango. I am the daughter of a village headman and a beautiful woman whom I barely knew. I am the elder sister of Kohaku. I am a taijiya, raised from birth in the art of daemon slaying, weapon making and purifying youkai remains. For centuries my people have guarded the tomb of Midoriko, creator of the Shikon no Tama. I now help protect the guardress of the Tama while we search for shards and battle the shape changer Naraku who has managed to reek havoc on all of our lives.

I am the taijiya, Sango. I was never taught how to be a wife, but I have agreed to be the wife and the mother to the children of a hentai houshi whose infatuation with the female species is beyond infuriating.

I am the taijiya, Sango. I have been adopted into a pack where I have become elder sister to a miko from the future and a hanyou who has more in common with me than even he can fathom. I have become the aunt to a kitsune cub. I have become a granddaughter to an elderly miko who, until our appearance and like myself, had not family.

I am the taijiya, Sango. I have, despite the pain and hardships, faced my fears and I am happy. I have decided that if I had to loose my family and my friends and everything that I have ever known, I will be thankful that I was able to come across people such as those who have embraced me with open arms.

I am Sango, the taijiya, last of my village.

**I am Sango.**


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